According to a recently surfaced Bloomberg report, the online retailing giant, Amazon, is considering purchasing Slack, the professional messaging service, for a reported $9 billion.
So who uses Slack?
Founded in 2013, Slack has been adapted by multiple companies, including BuzzFeed, Samsung and Airbnb. Moreover, Amazon is the sole major company without its own native-messaging platform, as Facebook has Messenger, Google has Hangouts, Microsoft has Outlook and Apple has iMessage. Therefore, Amazon has an immediate need for such a service.
Having raised over $540 million, and an additional $200 million last April, Bloomberg projects that Slack's evaluation might surpass $9 billion.
Though, the report went on to suggest that Slack might not accept any of the rumored offers.
Is the Amazon deal for real or is this just smoke in the wind?
If Amazon's acquisition of Slack materializes, it will be the biggest third-party investment in the company's history. As far as the probability of all this is concerned, despite the fact that the company is in need of such a utility, it still is a very uncharacteristic move, since Amazon has not cared, so far, for investments of that caliber. I guess there is always a first time.
At the time of writing, neither Amazon or Slack have responded to our request for a comment.
It is also worth adding that in March Amazon purchased the Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com, for a reportd $650 million.
Other deals of that nature include robotics company Kiva, the video-streaming service Twitch and shoe retailer Zappos. The latter one cost Amazon the most, at $1.2 billion.
How can Amazon benefit from such an investment?
Bloomberg's report claims that the move could boost the company's Enterprise Services. The report reads,
"Buying Slack would help Seattle-based Amazon bolster its enterprise services as it seeks to compete with rivals like Microsoft Corp.
and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. The company’s cloud-hosting unit, Amazon Web Services, in February unveiled a paid-for video and audio conferencing service -- Amazon Chime -- that lets users chat and share content."
Can I download Slack?
Slack is free to download across most platforms, for individual use, though companies can only access it through a paid subscription model, which includes extra special features, such as the likes of unlimited communication history, support, and statistics
The latest 2017 statistics suggest that Slack has about 5 million daily active users, with 1.5 million of those paying for the service.
